I will discuss some points here which I noticed first-hand and think that make a difference in the life of a Software Engineer

1. Imposing things on the developers never works out:
   • Being it a decision of choosing a technology stack, or implementing an idea in a certain way, if the management is imposing something, it will lead to conflicts in the future. The cost, reliability and implications of the decision should be underlined beforehand.
2. Making assumptions based on scalability and performance:
   • We all know that a cache works better than Mysql right. That’s where you might go wrong. Don’t assume things since any one conclusion won’t be applicable to all the technology decisions.
3. In House solution
   • In-house solution is recommended only when you can’t achieve by the already existing open source solutions. It’s because security and planning are the most underestimated parts of an application being developed in tight deadlines, especially in a big organisation.
4. Don’t allot a developer work which he is uninterested to perform.
   • There will not always be good work. A motivated individual will be able to do bad work for lets say, 2 months but the manager is to be blamed if that is given the same shit for an elongated period of time.
5. The blame game:
   • If the product fails, or in the event of any other misfortunate failure, the management wants an answer. In higher levels of hierarchy, the blame game will happen, because everyone is concerned about their future. But if the blame is put on the freshers or people with less than 2 years of experience, the whole point was to make them teach, guide them and not consider them as your safety nets.
6. Always have a backup plan:
   • This is not just true to the software world, but in all aspects of life. Always remember murphy’s law
     Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. And always have a backup plan
7. Having a balanced team
   • A team should have a hierarchy which consists of members ranging from freshers to specialists, architects, under a manager. If the team has only freshers or only the very experienced people, you might missing on a lot of interesting stuff and the conversations will be a bit too focussed. Sometimes, its better to have a diverse opinion. Having a whole team of freshers is just a very bad idea for any organisation.
8. Making life interesting at work
   • There will be a lot of people interested in a variety of hobbies. Have a team focussed on learning technology, maybe some will prefer reading a book, regular playing sessions. This should not be a part of people doing it together. It should be about the company doing it for its employees.
9. The best way to determine a product’s success is to guess the integration of the team.
   • If the whole team is together, and very enthusiastic about solving the problem, then even if there is an issue, the team will get to it and solve it, since its their responsibility
10. Know where you belong:
    • Know your good points, start focussing on a specific area as opposed to the college time where a jack of all trades in considered good. There will be stubborn people and there will be egotist people. You would want to avoid consistent company of some people who will try to refute the obvious facts, just to get their points doubled.
11. Find a mentor
    • This might be the last, but has been the most important point which shaped up my life. I’ll use it as a post credit scene :P
      A mentor can help learn in the right direction. A task which you might take 10 hours to complete can be done in less than 2 hours with little guidance. In corporate life, I have been influenced with the following people who did play a major role in shaping up my decisions: Jainesh Doshi, Vamsi Krishna, Sourabh Tripathi, Puneet Jolly, Saransh Varshneya, Balaji Muniswamy, Vivek Jha

Well, read and spread knowledge - that’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest. - Warren buffet